Joan Miro Biography

Below are some facts and quotes I found relevant and interesting.

• Birth/Death: April 20, 1893 - December 25, 1983 (aged 90)
• Born in Barcelona, Spain
• Art influenced by Andre Masson, Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton
• Generally thought of as a Surrealist, however he rejected membership to any artistic movement

• "how did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well, I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..." (wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Mir%C3%B3)
• "the spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me." - Joan Miro, 1958, quoted in Twentieth-Century Artists on Art
• Art Critics "are more concerned with being philosophers than anything else. They form a preconceived opinion, then they look at the work of art. Painting merely serves as a cloak in which to wrap their emaciated philosophical systems." (wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Mir%C3%B3)